Permission Issues in python cgi scripts on Apache 2.2 on OSX Leopard

[Dan Yamins]

Using Apache 2.2 on my local OSX machine, I;ve set up a virtual host to
serve a directory that a project of mine is in.  In this directory, I have
some python .cgi scripts that I use to dynamically generated locally-used
html code.   In several places,scripts that work fine when not run as .cgi
scripts via the webserver (but just as regular .py scripts in the Python
interpreter) break when run by Apache because of what look like permissions
related issues.     Specifically:

1) When a script attempts to make a directory, it fails to do so unless
writing is enabled on the superdirectory for all users, not just owner or
group.   I see a "permission denied" error via the cgitb output.

and,

2) Some operating system stat modification functions, like os.utim, fail --
with the error message being that "Operation is Not Permitted".    I've put
permissions to 777 for all the involved files but to no avail.   (Am I right
in thinking that this problem is also a permissions issue?  I know the first
one is, because the error message says so explicitly.)

My computer is running off-line and this only ever going to be a local
development task.   So, my basic question is:  is there some way, for the
directories that I'm serving, to turn of all the permissions protections
whatsoever?  E.g. to run my cgi scripts as if the process running the
scripts had all root privileges?  And so that I can run scripts via cgi
without having to worry about problems like the "Operation Not Permitted
Errror"?  (I want to be able to take advantage of using pythong for dynamic
web-page generation without worrying about permission and security issues,
since these files will never be near anything online.)

I've tried to do things like put the proper things in my Apache
configuration files (e.g the virtual host conf fil, the httpd.conf file,
etc...), but this failed to achieve my goal.

I apologize if I'm sending this mail to the wrong list,

Thanks,
Dan
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